


Aurora

by Bloodless_Recital



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24482791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bloodless_Recital/pseuds/Bloodless_Recital
Summary: AU of Deerstalker by MidoriOokami.Shikako has her summons, finally, but of course it couldn't be that simple. The Bao Pride's former summoner may not be as dead as previously assumed.
Comments: 45
Kudos: 423
Collections: Heliocentrism — a Dreaming of Sunshine recursive collection





	Aurora

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Deerstalker](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24413926) by [MidoriOokami](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidoriOokami/pseuds/MidoriOokami). 



She knows as soon as she unfurls the contract that there is something Not Right about it, but it takes her a moment, eyes flickering over the page, to catch on to what’s bothering her. She brushes her thumb gently over the aberration, looking, wondering, before lifting the digit to her mouth and biting down. She will sign _before_ asking, just in case. She’s already spent six hours running for her life, and that was with only _one_ leopard pursuing her. Hopefully having her name on the contract will offer her some protection, in case what she has to ask prompts further hostility.

She could, of course, choose not to ask at all. It would probably be wiser; it would certainly be safer.

… She is not going to do that.

“Yue-sama,” she says in a tone of polite curiousity, gaze fixed on the name above where hers has yet to dry, “your previous summoner, Tobirama Senju. Why isn’t his name crossed out?”

* * *

Han Xin leads her back into the tunnels of the dark and the spikes and the slime, which Shikako doesn’t especially enjoy having to traverse again, but at least he’s moving somewhat slower this time. She wonders, as she runs, is Sasuke still at the training ground, waiting for her to return? It’s been over eight hours, now; long into the night over there. She pictures him practicing katas or jutsu in the dark, waiting for her to reappear; wondering if she will. And then she stops picturing it because the guilt is distracting her, and she can’t afford to be distracted in terrain this hostile. The soles of her sandals are long since chewed to pieces by the sharp rocks; chakra is all that protects her feet anymore.

After about thirty minutes Han slows almost to a crawl; the tunnel ahead shrinks significantly, almost too small for him, though it proves no difficulty for Shikako.

“I don’t remember it being this small,” he grumbles, sidling forward in an awkward crouch. Shikako pauses for a moment and turns off her LED, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark; as she suspected, there is light ahead, though it doesn’t look like daylight—or lamplight, for that matter. In fact, it reminds her most of her LEDs.

She’s been able to sense a chakra signature for quite some time, now. Since she can’t seem to sense any of the leopards, it’s the _only_ chakra she can sense apart from the ambient natural energy that permeates the air here even more thickly than in Konoha, so it would have been harder _not_ to notice. Especially given its calibre. Enormous reserves—easily Kage-level, though not to Jinchuuriki standards—and a feeling, if she had to describe it, like water under ice; a river frozen over so thickly that no movement can be glimpsed under the surface. (Her metaphors never seem sufficient to describe what she can sense. Practice ought to make perfect, but she thinks they might actually be getting worse.)

And so she is not surprised when the tunnel opens back up again into a space where the sharp edges of the rocks have been smoothed away, though the icy slime remains, and the Nidaime Hokage is lying, curled on his side as though merely sleeping, on a pile of furs in the middle of it. She saw this coming. There’s no way she can be surprised. (That is the long-dead _Nidaime Hokage!_ Holy shit! She knew it had to be, but had secretly thought that maybe the obvious, evident conclusion was wrong, somehow. … Okay, the ‘not at all surprised’ thing was a lie. She is somehow, despite it all, surprised.) He is dressed in the armor he must have been wearing when he died—or didn’t die, apparently—only his happuri having been removed and laid beside the furs within easy reach, as though he might awaken at any moment and take it up again. He looks like the depictions in the history books; pale skin, white hair, red markings. But the black, thorny vines inked across his skin… those are definitely unexpected. As is the the fact that the light she had wondered the source of seems to be coming from _him._

She stays at the entrance, unsure if she is allowed to approach, as Han Xin goes in and circles around until he is by Tobirama’s head. Here in the larger space the leopard is able to stand at his full height again, but somehow, head bent down over his summoner, he looks smaller than before.

“What happened to him?” asks Shikako. She takes a couple of steps further in, testing, and when Han doesn’t rebuke her comes the rest of the way to stand beside him. …Beside them. “I was taught that he was killed by Cloud shinobi during the first war, but…” She doesn’t continue, merely gesturing at the body, which itself states that that _clearly_ is not what actually happened.

Han _hmm_ s deep in his throat; it sounds almost like a growl. “It was almost true.” He snorts bitterly, shaking his shaggy head. “It might as well be true. I was there, when this happened, and it should have killed him; the seal was meant to kill him.”

It was a _seal_? She examines the inked thorns with more interest, but no symbols jump out at her. They’re just especially vicious-looking briars.

“When I realized what was happening—that he wasn’t going to be able to save himself—I brought him back here with me. Yue-sama wasn’t exactly happy.” He shrugs. It doesn’t seem to bother him, so either Yue isn’t as scary once you get to know her or (and this, she thinks, is the more likely explanation) he just knew and decided to accept the consequences before he did it. “I had picked up on some sealing knowledge after so long working with Tobirama – enough that I was able to alter the seal before it killed him. He’s been like this ever since. I don’t—” his voice lowers into a frustrated growl, “I don’t _know_ enough, and have no way of learning more. It’s a miracle I was able to alter it at all – if I tried again it might kill him. But like this, he’s practically dead already.”

Shikako couldn’t disagree.

“You used seals, during the hunt,” Han continues, lifting his head at last to meet her gaze. “On touch, so they must have been your own. Can you help?”

She hates that her first thought is, _If I do this, he’ll owe me._ It shouldn’t be like that—she doesn’t want her relationships with her summons to be like that. She hopes to build a relationship with them, that eventually they will trust and respect each other as partners. Debts have no place here. So she says gently, “I don’t know. But I can look, at least,” and, after glancing at Han in a silent request for permission and receiving a nod, begins a more hands-on examination of the marks on Tobirama’s body.

“The seal is centered on his chest,” Han says as Shikako picks up one of Tobirama’s limp hands, inspecting the tiny tendrils of thorns which wind around his fingers. It’s a relief to hear. She’d already been dreading the necessary awkwardness of removing clothing in order to access the rest of the seal, but at least she won’t have to take off his pants. Small mercies.

She unbuckles the chest armor and sets it to the side. The shirt she hesitates over for a moment, before taking out a kunai and just cutting up the front rather than try to wrestle it over his head. She has needle and thread in Hammerspace, so if need be she can just sew it up when she’s done.

He’s not very hairy, she notices, and tries to focus on how that’s convenient instead of how incredibly weird is is that she _knows_ that now, about _Tobirama Senju,_ the _Second Hokage._ Hells. Sasuke is not going to _believe_ this.

The seal itself is slightly off-center on his chest, edging toward the left—right over his heart. The vines that stretch over the rest of his body fade into existence around its edges, apparently an effect of the seal rather than actually part of it. Fitting the overall motif, the seal gives off the impression of a heavily stylised flower, with five spirals extending from the points of a pentagon in the center. Or—no, the longer she stares, the more what she at first thought was a flower resembles a paw, instead. The petals (toes?) have spikes that could be interpreted as claws. Or thorns?

Shikako points at the ‘claws’, not quite touching. “Your additions?” she asks.

Han nods again. “The seal was intent-based—formed by the hatred of the shinobi who set it. I don’t know which of the Cloud-nin it was—there was no shortage of hatred among them. It was acting as a paralytic, which, once it reached his heart…”

Shikako is familiar with intent-based seals, but only as barriers. She’s never heard of one used as an attack, but she can follow Han’s thought process, she thinks.

“So you had to counter the intent,” she says.

The leopard looks surprised, she thinks. He’s not human, and expressions don’t seem to translate very well. “No, not exactly,” he says. “Once I realized what it was doing I redirected it, or tried to. I didn’t know exactly what it was going to do, but I was running out of time. It worked. He lived. But that’s when the ‘paralysis’ became… this.”

Redirected, not countered. It’s not what she would have done—her first impulse, which she had initially assumed Han shared, would have been to negate the seals intent with an intent directly counteropposed. Which. Might be hard, given the original fuel had apparently been _hatred,_ which would make the counter…

How many people are still alive that even _met_ Tobirama, let alone loved him? Tsunade, maybe? But she can’t bring Tsunade here, she’s sure the summons wouldn’t allow it. It’s just her, here.

She stares down at Tobirama’s sleeping face.

… Can she love a person she’s never met? A stranger? … He _is_ her favorite Hokage.

She stifles a snort, not wanting to offend Han. Imagines saying to this man, _I love you,_ the way she would say it to her brother or her friends, and grimaces. It doesn’t ring true at all. _I respect you, I admire you, I think you’re super cool, I want to bottle your genius brain and drink it—_ those are all geniune. She could state those with feeling. But _I love you_?

She’s going to have to find a different counter. Which isn’t impossible, but it’s going to be a _lot_ more complicated and take a _lot_ more time—time that she simply doesn’t have, with everything else on her plate. The thought of it makes her feel tired in a deeper way than the ache in her muscles can account for.

Well.

She sighs.

Nothing to be done about it. She’ll copy down the seal for study, ask Yue-sama about bringing Tsunade to perform a counter-seal even though she already knows the answer—

Wait. Wait just a damn second.

She looks up at Han, a feeling like the sun rising up in her chest that begins to pull at her cheeks; to crinkle her eyes. She’s smiling, helplessly. “Xin-san,” she says, “I think you might be able to counter this seal after all. Did you love your summoner?”

It’s another question she suspects she already knows the answer to.

**Author's Note:**

> No one:  
> Absolutely no one:  
> Not a single soul:  
> Me: “Did someone say 'weird Sleeping Beauty AU with snow leopards'?”  
> -  
> Also me, @myself: “If you somehow manage to turn this incredibly crack premise into more angst - I swear to god, I will be confused and disappointed.”  
> I stole the “name gets crossed out when the summoner dies” from a fic (and all the fire’s at your fingertips, by PandaFlower) because it was convenient for this. AFAIK it doesn’t show up in canon.


End file.
